| Brown goes overboard in Banff
On Monday, July 29, the Banff Centre's Cultural Journalism Conversations series closes with Ian Brown. You know Brown, he's the rumpled, slightly pugilistic-looking journalist who re-enters your mental life from a different angle every couple of years.
As a magazine feature writer, an author or a CBC and TV Ontario host (of "Talking Books," "Human Edge" and "The View From Here"), Brown looks at everyday life and asks "what's going on here?" He keeps things personal, turning to his own life and attitudes in books like Man Overboard, and then talking to others and comparing notes. (At the same time, surely he couldn't keep winning those National Magazine and Newspaper awards if he wasn't doing his research as well.) Sometimes Brown offers himself as a stand-in for readers, experiencing things they might have mused about doing but just haven't got around to – like reading "Paradise Lost."
Like a dinner guest who takes an offhand remark seriously and raises the level of the chit-chat until everyone feels they've learned something, Brown works outward from the ordinary and keeps asking questions until something interesting arrives. How important do you think personal stories are to Ian Brown? Well, he founded Open Letters, a Web site devoted to first-person writing (you can read the archives at http:// openletters.net/). Brown speaks at the Rolston Recital Hall on July 29 at 8 p.m., and the event is free.
Recent upgrades to the Writers Guild of Alberta's Web site include a useful "resources section" (www.writersguild.ab.ca/resources.htm) – writer's markets, jobs and literary contests are all mentioned here. For example, there's a call for submissions from Greek-Canadian writers for "Musings: an anthology of Greek-Canadian literature." Up to 3,500 words of prose or five poems, along with a bio and self-addressed stamped envelope should be mailed to Greek-Canadian Anthology c/o Vehicule Press, P.O.B. 125, Place du Parc Station, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 4A3. The deadline is August 31, 2002. For more information, write tess_f@dsuper.net and include "Greek-Canadian" in your subject line. |
